A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.

I had a scrapbook deep and thick
I read it in the night
I burned the candle to the wick
A precarious light

In it there were photographs
And clippings by the score
Of every wrong and every shaft
That'd pierced me to the core

I kept my quill at my right hand
And in the margins wrote
My hourglass had lost its sand
My eyes began to float

This book was worn with constant care
The dogeared pages bent
I was constantly to share
Of those I did resent

Time came 'round to find me sick
Ailing from the frost
Of a cold poison dark and thick
I knew that all was lost

I bent closer, smelt the book
It was the book itself!
I'd recover, all it took
Was to place it on the shelf!

And so the scrapbook lost allure
I closed it with a snap
The health of soul I then assured
I placed on pen its cap


Close your books, my dearest friends
And in the end you'll see
Your spiritual health you will amend

You'll finally be FREE!



SoulSurvivor
(C)1/28/2016